The LEVEL 11 blog

It’s critical that you know whether or not your website is adequate (i.e. generating maximum value for your business). If there’s improvement to be made, every effort should be made to get your digital house in order as quickly as possible (we're right HERE to help!). This list will help you to do a decent high-level evaluation of your current website situation, of course keeping in mind that there’s many more things that should be considered and evaluated to really optimize your web presence.

1 - PURPOSEWhat do you want to get out of your website? There needs to be a clear purpose to your web presence in order to make everything about it make sense. Whether you want to sell product directly through the site, provide information, generate leads, or some combination of those, everything about your site needs to work towards a specfic end.

2 - AUDIENCEUnderstanding the type of person that you want the website to be tailored to is essential in mapping out everything on your site. Literally everything on your website needs to be very focused on your audience. It sounds simple, but often we come across websites that provide irrelevant information, or have a design that isn't conducive to the type of person that would frequent such a site.

3 - BRANDINGYour brand is bigger than your website, but there needs to be a homogenous branding of your business anyway. Ensure that your site has the look and feel of your business as a whole. If your brand is very loud in a way that is over-the-top for a website, you may need to find ways to neutralize your primary brand just a bit in order to not scare people away from exploring the rest of your site.

4 - DESIGNHaving an eye for design is huge. A website that is aesthetically pleasing is more likely to engage potential customers for a longer period of time, and the longer someone is engaging with your product, the more likely they are to convert into a paying customer.

5 - LAYOUTA successful website involves much more psychology than one would think. Consider how someone stumbling onto your site for the first time will engage with it. Is it easy for them to find out what you do? Can they find what they're looking for easily? Is the interface clean enough that they don't get bogged down in information overload? A naturally-flowing layout is essential for conversion rate optimization.

6 - CODINGThis may be a bit too nerdy for some to care about, but the coding of your website matters a lot. Not only can it have a huge effect on the buyer's experience, but your site's coding (the architecture behind what the commoner sees - think about the power in your home... there's far more wiring than you'd think) has a huge effect on SEO. Our SEO tool can help you figure out how you're doing.

7 - RESPONSIVEYour website needs to look good on any device. To see how it looks, open your site on your desktop or laptop. With the window open from the top to the bottom of your screen, slide one side of the window left to right. As you make your browser window as narrow as a tablet, your site should look functional and good still. And most importantly, given how important mobile is, make your browser as narrow as a phone screen. If your site doesn't look right, you've got issues with the architecture that need to be addressed. This too will impact your SEO, as Google will not allow non-mobile friendly sites to rank high in search from a mobile device.

8 - CONTENTYour site needs to have enough quality, relevant content. You're getting traffic to your website, to give the people a chance to engage with your site. Content is what makes your website a salesperson that sells 24/7. This content can be product descriptions, biography content, blogs, video content, etc.

9 - MORE CONTENTThe value of content cannot be understated. Give your audience everything they need. If you provide value to them, they'll be more likely to convert to a customer, so give them value! Give it away for free, and your chances for conversion are better immediately.

10 - GOALSGoals make your efforts measurable. Put a system in place to make sure you can measure things such as shopping cart abandonments, requests for information, contact forms, successful purchases, etc.

11 - E-COMMERCE​We always say, don't make it hard for people to give you their money. This isn't to sound shallow, but how many of us have left a buying situation because someone kept asking for more information, or the process was too long, or it just was hard to find exactly what you were looking for? Everything, from the design and layout of your site, to the content and buying process, work together to determine your success with e-commerce. There's also plenty of little things that can help make the transaction go smoothly, such as using a tool from Amazon where people can pay on your site using their Amazon credentials (then they don't have to enter all their info). Whatever you can do to eliminate steps and make the process easy will lead to more conversions from your website.

About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo. We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization. Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!